Thoughts on Player Feedback

The other day, the official site put up a news entry containing a selection of player feedback as well as responses from the staff. They only really showed things that they intend to change, except for the last item on the list. You can find a translated version here. This post is just sharing thoughts on them given that there are actual changes going to be made to the game based on this.

Reduce the EXP curve…. again

Starting at the top, the experience requirements for lv41+. Yeah, they reduced them once already (details and comparisons halfway down this post) but the curve is still far too harsh. Some things to remember about this game is that we’re not at the end cap yet. We’re no where near that, so it really brings into question what insane requirements we were due to get in the future. The other thing to remember is that it’s not your character level, it’s your class level. If this was a couple of months ago this wouldn’t matter so much, given that you could only play one class at a time but we have sub-classing now. To fully cap a character essentially requires you to get to lv50 at least twice. If you want to experiment any further then the huge exp requirements are a real turn off as they are.

Finally, there is the issue of content level requirements, which are very high compared to the last two installments of the series (relatively speaking anyway, of course PSU changed their approach when S4 difficulty was added). Even if they changed that, you still have the issue of the really restrictive EXP penalty system they have at the moment, which reduces the EXP gained from enemies that are over 5 levels above you. 5 levels!

So yeah, it’s a welcome change within the scope of how this game works. At the moment, they only really need to make getting to 45 somewhat quicker (there’s not really anything that’s unlocked between 45-50 anyway). However, honestly I’d argue that it’s a little too soon to be thinking about effective soft-caps.

Lower the number of items needed for unlocking the level cap

No, balls to that. Abolish those quests entirely. They serve absolutely no purpose other than to add an unnecessary level of roadblocking. To get to Hard level content at the moment and play it in any meaningful way you need to:

be level 20

have completed the difficulty unlock Client Order

have completed the cap-unlock Client Order

The level 20 requirement is nothing unusual. The addition of the difficulty unlock order is already a bit unnecessary but at least I can sort of justify it within the context of the world by considering a proof of strength. The cap-unlock order on top of that not only feels redundant it doesn’t even make any remote sense. Seriously, fuck reducing the number of items required or increasing the drop rate. ABOLISH THEM.

Various Rarity Tweaks

Not opposed too much of this. I would at least like the remote hope of either finding something during a run, whether that be a rare monster or an item. They will have to be careful how they adjust this of course, as items could very easily sweep from the realms of “nigh on impossible to obtain” to “can’t vendor them fast enough”.

The only exception to this is the Matter Board, which needs its rates for some items severely tweaked. By some, I mean any nodes on paths that are required to progress the story. I’m less bothered by the rates of any nodes that are just extras.

Increase the value of the Premium Set

People weren’t satisfied with what they got for their money I guess, fair enough. The only thing I worry about here is the addition of the “premium medical drink”. This has dangerous potential to wander into “pay to win” territory, so I hope this is carefully considered.

Make Time-Attack quests solo-able

This change could go either way. I’m naturally concerned that the changes might mess with the coordination required to complete the missions as a group, which is the thing I enjoy the most from them. Mind, the biggest changes would be to the Naberius Time-Attack I guess, given that I’m fairly sure it’s the only one that completely blocks a single player from progressing, right at the start at that.

Of course I can fully understand why people want this, given that some Client Orders and Matter Board nodes require drops from enemies that are fairly rarely encountered in the regular quests and free fields.

This change will introduce new Client Orders for soloing, so the regular Time-Attack Client Orders you may be familiar with won’t be changing.

Overall

Overall, the changes seem positive. Disappointed that certain aspects of the game weren’t mentioned such as poor difficulty scaling for multi-parties, improvements to free-fields and the restrictive skill tree system to name a few. It is at least nice to see that Sega are continuing to take on feedback and do appear to be somewhat willing to change their game for the better.

Towards the Future

The next big update is just around the corner, with the first part of That Which Destroys History due on the 7th (along with a few of the changes talked about in this post).